Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch

00:00:00:13 – 00:00:14:24
Speaker 1
Welcome to today’s, visit Satellite Chat. And today we have, at least a couple different very interesting topics to talk about and to lead us off. We’ll go to Scott Meyer at, Sims at the University of Wisconsin.

00:00:14:26 – 00:00:36:16
Speaker 2
Okay. With, I, we to open up here with a very interesting case. Blowing dust that happened back. This is back in the 16th of January, in the Kansas, the Nebraska and Colorado area, behind, strong.

00:00:36:18 – 00:01:17:14
Speaker 2
Frontal passage. Whoops. I don’t want to talk here right now. So what I’ve got here, I’m going to first just show this particular image here because it’s often hard to actually view an animation. But this is from from it goes east and it’s a visible image. So what we can see here is some hints of these plumes of blowing dust that seem to have their the actual actual origin here is south west turn corner.

00:01:17:16 – 00:01:46:18
Speaker 2
Of Colorado, on the border area of Colorado. And. Nebraska. And you can see that a lot of the areas here are having hit gusts, in excess of. 40 to even 50.

00:01:46:21 – 00:02:20:14
Speaker 2
Five here. So, they were quite, it was awfully breezy. And this area was also extremely dry. I believe they were under an extreme drought. And so, it was it hit, to, for the strong breezes to, To, to activate a lot of blowing dust. I try and play the animation here.

00:02:20:16 – 00:02:50:14
Speaker 2
I’m not sure you’ll be able to see every image, but at least if you see every other, you might get some idea that it seems to be increasing in aerial coverage as we get into the afternoon hours, however, high clouds overhead are beginning to obscure it, and so it does get a little bit harder to see the plumes of dust as we get more towards the later afternoon hours.

00:02:50:16 – 00:03:22:02
Speaker 2
In order to help us see these features a little bit easier, what we want to do is go to one of the polar orbit or satellites. And if we look at some high res imagery, from Tim, the Motus instrument aboard the Aqua, which is one of the paw print satellites. And we look at a two color image, which is an RG be made from three different channels.

00:03:22:05 – 00:03:54:17
Speaker 2
What we can see here with a lot more detail is the exact origin of where the plumes are beginning. And you can see they have a like a tannish or a light brownish type of a color. So it is easier to pick out the plume of dust from the areas of high clouds. So there are a lot of these, types of, of products that do, make this job a little bit easier here.

00:03:54:17 – 00:04:30:05
Speaker 2
You can also see a little bit of that brownish stuff. And, for eastern Colorado, because there happens to be a gap in the clouds. So having access to high resolution coal or orbiter imagery and these are cheap combinations to make the job, a heck of a lot easier. I think though we’ve got some, some, some other the should be combos and other images that, are going to be shown.

00:04:30:08 – 00:04:32:26
Speaker 2
But Bernie.

00:04:32:28 – 00:04:52:06
Speaker 1
Okay, let’s, turn it over to Bernie here and then and then we’ll have some discussion.

00:04:52:08 – 00:04:53:05
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:04:53:07 – 00:04:57:17
Speaker 2
Can you see my screen here? Yeah. Good. Here.

00:04:57:19 – 00:05:22:16
Speaker 3
Okay. And so Scott already showed the, true color. This is one that, Steve Miller developed while he was out at NRL and Monterey, and now he’s here at Scripps, and, it it shows the same one, but this one is. Let me see. Is this will from this one is from there. So it’s one of the same faces.

00:05:22:22 – 00:05:33:09
Speaker 2
Bernie I’m just seeing a blue screen of yours. I don’t know if anybody else is actually, Yeah. I mean, I see your screen, but I don’t see you over a browser or,

00:05:33:11 – 00:05:35:17
Speaker 1
I think it’s showing the wrong monitor. Bernie.

00:05:35:20 – 00:05:39:28
Speaker 3
Well, let me, I’m wondering, because I had a problem, something.

00:05:39:28 – 00:05:43:17
Speaker 2
Okay, I see it. And then now it’s,

00:05:43:19 – 00:05:44:13
Speaker 3
Now, do you see it?

00:05:44:15 – 00:05:45:09
Speaker 2
Yes. Yep.

00:05:45:11 – 00:06:09:13
Speaker 3
Okay. But this is not the browser I was looking at, but. So we’ll show this one. This one is actually the European RGB, which is now posted on our web set right now. And so if you can see my cursor here is where the dust is. It’s, bright magenta and pink color. And this one is for later in the afternoon that 2022.

00:06:09:14 – 00:06:20:08
Speaker 3
See. And it’s from Motus. So let me see if I can pull the other browser window back over and we can see that. Can you see that now?

00:06:20:11 – 00:06:24:20
Speaker 2
Nope. I only have the green screen again.

00:06:24:22 – 00:06:41:10
Speaker 3
Okay. For some reason it doesn’t like looking at my browser. Let me see if I do it to a different, side here. Otherwise. In the meantime, while I’m trying to get this, if we have any comments from, Nebraska there.

00:06:41:12 – 00:07:10:27
Speaker 4
Yeah. You know, looking at this, what you have there is a static image with the pink on there. And from what was shown earlier on, of course, you know, typical, is, a website images. We were able to pick out the blowing dust. What was really interesting about this particular case is we had not only the blowing dust, but we had, the convective cloud associated with snow, snow showers across north central Nebraska.

00:07:11:00 – 00:07:28:10
Speaker 4
And we also had in using the 3.9 micron, we had a fire, about 25 miles northeast of North Platte that we were able to see from the 80, as well as the, the 3.9.

00:07:28:13 – 00:07:31:22
Speaker 1
Burning. I see your Motus, image here on the screen now.

00:07:31:24 – 00:07:55:17
Speaker 3
Okay, okay. So I’m showing it on my other screen, so hopefully we can still see it. So this is the one that’s on the blog. And here you can see hopefully with my cursor that this is blowing dust. And you can see some little streamers down in this area to and further south and to Kansas. This is the 40 degree line.

00:07:55:17 – 00:08:02:18
Speaker 3
So that’s the border in the Kansas. And here is the the northeast corner of Colorado burning.

00:08:02:18 – 00:08:08:05
Speaker 2
I’m not seeing your cursor. So if you could just explain where you’re talking when you’re saying here.

00:08:08:07 – 00:08:43:27
Speaker 3
Okay, so if you see the blue line going across, there’s I think there’s one blue line growing across that’s the 40 degree north. So if you follow that towards the right, then you can see it intersecting with, well, we know that the blowing dust, the big chunk is in northeast Colorado and southeast Nebraska. So where you have that blue line intersecting with, border between Nebraska and Kansas is, right in around there.

00:08:43:27 – 00:08:45:06
Speaker 3
Maybe if I click on it.

00:08:45:11 – 00:08:46:04
Speaker 2
See, I don’t.

00:08:46:06 – 00:08:46:15
Speaker 3
Know.

00:08:46:15 – 00:08:49:28
Speaker 2
Who. I don’t see a blue line either. So maybe you’re here.

00:08:50:05 – 00:08:50:16
Speaker 3
Or your.

00:08:50:16 – 00:08:57:10
Speaker 2
Dog had at a different image. I mean, I see an RGB up there, but I don’t see a blue line.

00:08:57:12 – 00:09:00:05
Speaker 3
Okay. A dark blue line that looks like a lat lum.

00:09:00:12 – 00:09:10:04
Speaker 1
Yeah, I don’t see it either. I, I think other people can see my cursor. I do see this pink signature here in southwest Nebraska and and northwest Kansas. Here.

00:09:10:06 – 00:09:11:24
Speaker 3
Okay. Can you see my cursor now?

00:09:11:25 – 00:09:12:25
Speaker 1
Okay, I see your cursor.

00:09:12:25 – 00:09:14:09
Speaker 2
Yep. It’s back.

00:09:14:12 – 00:09:21:17
Speaker 3
Oh, you know what? It didn’t switch screens. So here can you see this one.

00:09:21:19 – 00:09:23:14
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:09:23:16 – 00:09:24:21
Speaker 2
Here we go.

00:09:24:24 – 00:09:45:24
Speaker 3
Okay. There we go. Yeah. There’s the blue line okay. So this is the one that’s on the blog with and this is Steve Miller’s Pink. What he calls pink. But to me it looks more of a dusty color. And here you can see highlighted very nicely down into Nebraska. I mean, not Kansas, some of the streamers.

00:09:45:27 – 00:10:15:02
Speaker 3
So what I’m going to show also the county maps. But so here’s the blue line coming across. That’s the 40 degree. And so that goes into there’s the line between Nebraska and Kansas. I do know that, Ed posted it and there was an article out of Denver that said, the roads in here, Interstate 34, 36 and 70 were closed the afternoon of the 16th due to the blowing dust and some accidents.

00:10:15:02 – 00:10:39:07
Speaker 3
And one of the roads was closed for like about eight or more hours. I think. And, so since you can see the streamers of dust in here, a lot of this was the traffic where the road conditions were impacted as well. So did you have, road impacts like that in, Nebraska as well that, you know, of where it closed?

00:10:39:09 – 00:10:40:17
Speaker 3
Major highways.

00:10:40:19 – 00:11:08:21
Speaker 4
I guess. I’m not sure about actual closures, but we did, you know, via webcams and report, you know, I-80 was impacted in that area. And then probably 76 down into northeast Colorado, Imperial, Nebraska, which is in the very southwest, corner of Nebraska. There, had visibility reduced to one and three quarters on the, on the observation.

00:11:08:23 – 00:11:19:20
Speaker 4
But, some of the images and things that we were seeing, you know, definitely showed visibilities much worse than that. Across some of that area.

00:11:19:23 – 00:11:46:00
Speaker 3
Right. Okay. And so just to highlight what Scott said here was the drought map. And I actually pulled this I know it’s on the drought side, but this is also posted on the, North Platte website under their one of their significant events. So you can see where there was extreme drought in these areas. And they were these were areas that, you know, had, the stronger winds too.

00:11:46:00 – 00:11:50:15
Speaker 3
And so they were areas where we had the blowing. Yes. So we got.

00:11:50:18 – 00:12:20:15
Speaker 4
The forces that you could tell, like where the origination was. We did some looking afterwards and actually nine month spa values were, pretty low in that vicinity. Now, you know, it could be plowed fields or whatever, but, even though that map shows kind of detail where the origination was, nine months, or long term drought was is probably more probably worse than what that depicted at the time.

00:12:20:17 – 00:12:22:18
Speaker 3
So. Okay. Okay.

00:12:22:20 – 00:12:34:18
Speaker 2
Yeah. That was, the question I had if, you know, because it’s immediately to the west to Lake Ogallala, there you can see the lake and, and images and wondering just what kind of,

00:12:34:20 – 00:12:35:21
Speaker 4
Oh, you’re saying.

00:12:35:21 – 00:12:40:08
Speaker 2
These are farm areas, you know, that there was so much dust originating there.

00:12:40:15 – 00:12:50:09
Speaker 4
Yeah, it’s it’s a lot of there’s a lot of winter wheat. Okay. The southeastern panhandle and southwestern Braska.

00:12:50:12 – 00:13:15:17
Speaker 3
Yeah. Okay. And so this is the light dust. And, here was another time. A little bit later, we can see much larger areas. And my guess is that, since we’re also seeing it in the mountain areas, and then when I read, more up about, this particular dust product, it will give us some false positives, but, it helps us identify it.

00:13:15:17 – 00:13:45:20
Speaker 3
If this was animated, if we had enough imagery to look at it in an animated sense, then, we could see the moving parts versus the stationary parts. And I think Steve also showed, this was one from MODIS. Just to show a little bit the differences between the viewers with the high resolution and slightly different channels that go into it versus the Motus.

00:13:45:22 – 00:14:17:06
Speaker 3
And here we’re seeing, still quite a bit of coverage. This doesn’t have a map on it. It and here’s another one where it’s highlighted some of the brighter yellows where the dust is. And this shows a slightly different channels, but just another, variation in another color table to help, pull out the contrast between the dust and the surrounding features.

00:14:17:08 – 00:14:44:03
Speaker 3
A lot of them used, some of the visible channels during the day that are more sensitive to dust particle sizes versus the water and ice cloud, and also the long way difference, which has the sensitivity. And as I’ve shown, this is another one that, sport tends to, show. This is the RGV dust product that was developed by the Europeans.

00:14:44:05 – 00:15:08:06
Speaker 3
And so the dust is bright. You should type color. And the high clouds are this reddish orange and then cirrus are really dark and low. Clouds are more yellowish up in here. And as you can see under colder areas in the mountains, it will be this orange. So this isn’t really cloud up in here. It’s more of a, a cold area.

00:15:08:08 – 00:15:13:10
Speaker 3
So that’s about all I have.

00:15:13:13 – 00:15:19:22
Speaker 1
Okay. Any, questions or comments or additional discussion?

00:15:19:25 – 00:15:39:11
Speaker 3
Well, I guess this gets back to we were, wondering and since we have the forecasts off the side, do you actually issue a watch for blowing dust if you think it might happen? Or is that something that is only issued once? It, you get reports of it?

00:15:39:13 – 00:16:03:04
Speaker 4
No. I mean, you know, in cases where we would see some identification, you know, ahead of time, long term drought or something like that. You know what we had issued was a high wind warning and actually a watch prior to that for the wind. And then we might, you know, make some comment about, you know, the blowing dust in there.

00:16:03:07 – 00:16:22:10
Speaker 4
It’s really hard to know to what extent, you know, that the ground’s going to be loosened enough to do that, I guess. Based on agricultural practices at the time or whatever. So, you know, you get the same kind of event in April and you’re not going to see a lot of times the same, same effect here.

00:16:22:10 – 00:16:44:06
Speaker 4
But you might further east where, where, grounds are plowed, you know, just more of that agricultural area. So it kind of it’s hard to anticipate the degree or the amount of blowing dirt that’s going to happen ahead of time. But but we typically will make mention of it. If, you know, we think it’s going to be a big enough deal in, high wind warnings or whatever.

00:16:44:09 – 00:17:09:15
Speaker 4
I wanted to say to that, you know, that we’ve looked at some of the, images from the, proving ground and that, they have helped on some subsequent advisory level, high winds that we’ve had, to identify smaller areas of blowing dust to. It’d be nice if we, you know, can get these in in a winds and that at some point, I’m sure we will.

00:17:09:17 – 00:17:10:06
Speaker 4
Oh.

00:17:10:09 – 00:17:15:16
Speaker 5
Are you guys interested in in trying to get it into a website? It’s bandwidth an issue out there.

00:17:15:18 – 00:17:37:06
Speaker 4
Bandwidth is a huge issue here. So unfortunately, as much as we have a great desire to do that, where we would have to bring it in with further impact, what little bandwidth we have at the moment, there is hope that that’ll change here in the next couple of months. So, if that indeed occurs, then, maybe we’ll revisit that down the line somewhere.

00:17:37:09 – 00:17:37:18
Speaker 2
Okay.

00:17:37:20 – 00:17:47:06
Speaker 5
Yeah. Please let us know. This is, we had the same response from Lubbock. They were interested, but but then the next day, they came back and said, well, maybe not bandwidth is an issue. So.

00:17:47:08 – 00:18:01:13
Speaker 4
Yeah, you know, considering we were at point one, yesterday, it’s very tough for us to, to add anything further. But, you know, we do visit the web pages where we can get that information as much as we can.

00:18:01:15 – 00:18:04:24
Speaker 5
Okay. Great. Thanks.

00:18:04:26 – 00:18:12:18
Speaker 1
Okay. Any additional, discussion on that before we turn it over to Scott B.

00:18:12:20 – 00:18:34:00
Speaker 2
This is Daniel at WFO. So a quick comment on, bringing the products and a website. I guess what other solution? And I know this is sort of a pie in the shed, but, instead of of having, you know, I mean, I’m all for it. Somebody else, creating the products, then shipping, shipping them to us.

00:18:34:03 – 00:19:00:13
Speaker 2
I would like to see if I had my way would be, we can create our own RGB on a website, too. And, at our office, we’re running you up to two, and we have, most of, well, some of the, the Motus bands and some of the players that are coming in. And, you know, obviously that’s just those are the raw files and we can’t do any kind of an RGB manipulation with that.

00:19:00:13 – 00:19:23:26
Speaker 2
But if we had that capability, unable to but I would. Yeah. And a would to you can actually and I will show you an example. Great. So you can actually make your own own RGB is and yeah, that’s I think a lot of people will be, extremely happy about that. Yeah. And you’re right.

00:19:24:03 – 00:19:29:02
Speaker 2
You have to look forward to seeing that. Thanks. Okay.

00:19:29:04 – 00:19:42:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. Because this is Bernie. That’s something that you will need for those are in a couple of years to help utilize all the channels that are coming in over.

00:19:42:24 – 00:19:54:04
Speaker 4
Hey, this is John again. You know, once the Goes-r type products are going to be coming down, are they scheduled for SBN delivery or do you know.

00:19:54:07 – 00:20:20:24
Speaker 2
I imagine they would have to be because it’s a lot of data and, a lot of bandwidth. So I think the s been the only thing that will be able to handle it. At what point it will be flowing into the W Air Force, I can’t tell you. I mean, because, you know, after we get the bird up there in, in orbit, I think we’re going to be having to do a lot of, testing and evaluation.

00:20:20:27 – 00:20:24:12
Speaker 2
So I think it’ll be a while.

00:20:24:14 – 00:20:37:00
Speaker 4
That’s understood. I just it’s good to know that, the route will be to the SD end because they, you know, with, with all the, the enhancements and things, that’s going to be the way to go. Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:37:03 – 00:21:04:24
Speaker 2
And keep in mind that for now, goes are is scheduled to become goes west. So, that might change, but, goes east will have to wait for goes f, which I’m not sure when that’s launching. Yeah. Although East is the older satellites. So if it has a problem and it has had some problems, then eastern folks will get it goes.

00:21:04:26 – 00:21:17:16
Speaker 2
So yeah, I it all depends on what happens to the next couple of years. It’s a roll of the dice.

00:21:17:19 – 00:21:26:13
Speaker 1
Okay. Any other, questions regarding the, does.

00:21:26:15 – 00:21:30:01
Speaker 1
Okay. Well, Scott, you can take it away on our next topic here.

00:21:30:03 – 00:22:01:28
Speaker 2
Okay. If you’ve been in the eastern two thirds, Conus for the past 2 or 3 months, you’re aware that it’s been pretty cold, and that cold has had an an impact on growing a lot of ice and the Great Lakes. So I wanted to show a couple of EC examples. This was a blog post that I made back at the end of January, just when the ice was starting to take off in coverage.

00:22:02:01 – 00:22:30:12
Speaker 2
So what I’ve got here is this is an eight two, when we’ll compare a, a visible image with an our GP that we actually, I’m not really sure of the process. We got an expert here. His name is Jordan Gerst, and I told him, hey, if we could have this RGB and they would pursue, that would be great.

00:22:30:12 – 00:23:04:00
Speaker 2
And a couple hours after I asked him, he already had it. So, this image here again, we’re toggling between a visible and an RGB from the pierced instrument aboard this sumi NPP Polar Orbiter satellite. And so just, on this, on this, on the RCP, snow and ice are the reddish colors. And then the, the clouds are brighter.

00:23:04:02 – 00:23:31:22
Speaker 2
So, you know, you can see there’s certainly a lot of ice. And there are a few areas where it gets hard to see. Is that ice or is it cloud? But the RGB makes it very unambiguous as to, you know, where the clouds are and where the actual ISIS. So yeah, these RGV is in a still are doable.

00:23:31:24 – 00:24:05:12
Speaker 2
I think what we’ll need to do is have a page where we have a tutorial on how to do this. I don’t know if it’s easy or it’s hard, but positive aspect is it’s possible. What’s surprising about all the ice here? And it’s been awfully breezy if we compare two polar orbiter images, from the more this estimate, these images are about an hour and a half apart.

00:24:05:14 – 00:24:47:26
Speaker 2
And in that hour and a half, this is how much the ice is moving, because it’s just been so breezy. You know, having to blow all that cold air in here. So, you know, even though you have a lot of ice, it can still be moving around quite a lot. And so, you know, if you have, some responsibility for coastal waters, this would help you to keep an accurate eye on, you know, the ice aerial aerial coverage of the ice and how fast the ice is moving.

00:24:47:29 – 00:25:00:07
Speaker 2
I wanted to show a really. A thing we happen to have an overpass of, you know.

00:25:00:09 – 00:25:32:12
Speaker 2
Land that eight. So this offers images at 15, 18m. So we just happened to pass over the far western edge of Lake Superior, so you can see some just incredible, detail in the ice and the cracks and stuff. So it’d be awesome if we could have access to, you know, more than, if we had an image like this.

00:25:32:14 – 00:26:09:12
Speaker 2
So, you know, I had about every hour, that that would be pretty amazing. But, you know, this is hopefully, the the direction that we’re actually heading, but, well, unfortunately, we’ll take a while. So that’s what is happening at the end of January. Here’s what was happening yesterday. So again, here is a toggle between a visible image and then an RTP, from the first instrument on this image and P polar orbiter.

00:26:09:15 – 00:26:29:08
Speaker 2
So again, even though we’ve got a lot of cloudiness, we can see that the ice is really starting to grow. And Lake Superior a lot of ice in Lake.

00:26:29:11 – 00:27:16:29
Speaker 2
Van. And also in here on if we look at what was analyzed for the coverage. So I wanted this to tab here global. They estimated that almost all of the lake is about, at or slightly above 90% ice. So that’s pretty impressive. Overall, that does not happen all that often. There is some area of open right along the edge here, and you can kind of see that if we go back to the toggle, you can see some areas of open.

00:27:17:02 – 00:27:47:19
Speaker 2
So yeah, it’s not totally iced over yet, but if we have a couple more evenings where it’s calm and cold, I wouldn’t be surprised if if we get, you know, almost up to, the high 90s or maybe even 100% of ice coverage in superior. And, I don’t think we’ll ever get to 100%. And this lake or the flake here, but, we’re we’re getting awfully close, actually.

00:27:47:21 – 00:28:02:11
Speaker 2
So any any any any comments or or questions about these RFPs and the ice coverage.

00:28:02:13 – 00:28:18:00
Speaker 2
So, yes, for OMA, I think we should put together a web page that says, how do you do this? And I don’t think that should be too difficult. I agree. So and so help is on the way home. Hey, thanks for.

00:28:18:02 – 00:28:23:26
Speaker 1
Scott. Oh. Did you have time to make a quick note? Yeah. Okay. I’ll pass it over to you here.

00:28:23:26 – 00:28:29:15
Speaker 2
So a couple of to think two things.

00:28:29:18 – 00:28:56:25
Speaker 2
What? You give me control. The power to do it. So I hope you can see my screen. If you want to look at modus data, there are, two color RFPs online. Just Google Modus today. And this is the image from January 16th. And right in here. So you can see the blowing dust. So you’re going to have to identify the dust visually as you would in a truck.

00:28:57:00 – 00:29:18:15
Speaker 2
In a truck really. It’s not an RGB enhancement, but it does. You can even get down to 500 to 500, the 250 meter data from modus as well. So, it shows you both Terra and Aqua, so there’s multiple views from the different satellites each day. And then you can also scroll back to real time, which is.

00:29:18:18 – 00:29:44:16
Speaker 2
So if you look at yesterday, and scroll forward from time. But one thing I wanted to talk about today is that goes east, is going to start a new scanning schedule. They were supposed to test it today, but because of the critical weather day on the East Coast, that’s not happening. But the difference from the Conus sector, what you see here, it’s going to become the Conus extended sector.

00:29:44:16 – 00:30:11:09
Speaker 2
So there will be more scans of the entire Caribbean. So this will be it for Puerto Rico. Good for people monitoring tropical activity in the Caribbean. This will not get into here, so you’ll have to find it. You’ll have to find these extended scans, elsewhere at the moment, it’s not planned to go into a UPS, but there is a slight modification to a Conus scanning that is, on the horizon.

00:30:11:09 – 00:30:17:19
Speaker 2
So look for that probably in mid March. Something like that. So, that’s all I had to say.

00:30:17:21 – 00:30:24:02
Speaker 1
Okay. Any final questions or comments before we conclude?

00:30:24:04 – 00:30:36:12
Speaker 4
Hey this is John in North Platte. Just wanted to say thanks for for, inviting us on. And we will have a couple of folks here, for the afternoon session also. So I won’t be here, but but we’ll have some people here.

00:30:36:15 – 00:30:40:10
Speaker 1
Okay. That’s great. Thank you, John, for, participating.

00:30:40:13 – 00:30:41:12
Speaker 4
Yeah. No problem. Thanks.